A nurse survived eight days in the wreckage of a Turkish hospital destroyed by an earthquake in 1992. A newborn was rescued after more than a week in the rubble of Mexico City's 1985 quake. Now, in China, rescuers are pulling out victims days after they were buried by a powerful earthquake.

The largest earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay area in years was a seismic throat-clearing of sorts, compared with the magnitude-7.0 quake that experts anticipate will hit the region in the next 25 years.